David Leonard Rugg-Easey (my Dad - known as Dave) was born in 1917.
He was the eldest of four children born to Jonathan David and Daisy Dorothy Rugg-Easey. His three siblings were Doris, Eric and Vic.
Jonathan was a dentist - he had lived in Fulham, London most of his life, and apparently was well-known for his dentistry skills from boyhood, when he had a stall in a market and was able to relieve toothache and extract teeth relatively painlessly in the days before modern dental practice.
He practised as a dentist throughout his life, and by the time Dave was born, he had a large house and dental surgery in Fulham Palace Road.
Dave attended Latymer School which was a highly-regarded London grammar school. He seems to have done well at school - being particularly inspired, he later mentioned, by the sciences; Organic Chemistry in particular.
It was expected that Dave would join his father in the dental practice, and on leaving school, he became a student of dentistry at Guy's Hospital. He qualified as a dentist in 1935.
Pictures of Dave